TDK announced that it is to begin shipping 25GB recordable and rewritable Blu-ray Disc (BD) media across Europe and will follow with 50GB media in April.

TDK is a founding member of the Blu-ray Disc Association.

Recommended Retail Pricing is set at 15 Euro for a 25GB BD-R (write once), 20 Euro for a 25GB BD-RE (rewritable), 35 Euro for a 50GB BD-R (write once) and 45 Euro for a 50GB BD-RE (rewritable). Expect to see the first BD media on shelves from April 06, in line with the first BD hardware availability.

The single-sided discs are bare, cartridge-free media. The 25GB products are single layer whereas the 50GB products have a dual layer recording material structure. TDK first shipped mass production samples in December 2005, and with the subsequent issuance of the relevant licenses, the company immediately commenced full force manufacturing.

The high-sensitivity inorganic recording material utilised by TDK for the write-once type BD-R is completely different than the recording materials used for CD or DVD. Unlike the organic recording materials used in other media, the TDK Blu-ray Discs? inorganic material is impervious to light. This makes the discs well suited for archival. Composed of copper and silicon, TDK?s CuSi recording material delivers long-lasting performance. The recording material enables fast recording and playback speeds and also makes it possible to realise massive capacities through multi-layering. For TDK?s rewritable BD-RE media, a specially designed high-sensitivity phase change recording material is utilised. TDK siad that the material is so stable that a TDK Blu-ray Disc shows virtually no performance degradation even after it has been overwritten 10,000 times. The 25GB and 50GB BD-R and BD-RE discs offer 2x (72Mbps) rated recording speed.

A 0.1-millimeter thick cover layer comprises the Blu-ray Disc?s outermost internal surface, and the recording material resides beneath it. During recording, the laser passes through the cover layer in its path to the recording layer. Absolute uniformity in the thickness of the cover layer is critical to ensuring precise laser tracking, which is required for reliable performance. To achieve total uniformity in the cover layer?s thickness, TDK developed an exclusive Spin Coating manufacturing process. With TDK Spin Coating, the cover layer is spun onto the disc at a high rate of speed, ensuring even dispersal of the material. High precision stacking technology further ensures reliability by consistently overlaying disc layers with the utmost precision.